Anime News Network has reported that Hitler’s Mein Kampf has been translated into a manga format by the Japanese publisher East Press.
The manga has apparently sold 45,000 copies already (numbers which, for those keeping score, aren’t the highest for manga, but are equal to the Top 40 listings of mainstream comics, right between Blackest Night: Titans and Fantastic Four), and has led some to push for lifting Germany’s country-wide ban on the book.
Bavarian authorities, however, have resisted allowing the book to be sold, saying (rightly or wrongly) that they don’t feel that manga is an appropriate medium to handle such controversial material. East Press has previously produced manga graphic novels on Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince.
When asked about the book by ANN, East Press editor Kosuke Marou said, “it is a famous book, but there are few who have read it. I think it is [studying] material for knowing Hitler, a man synonymous with ‘devil,’ and what sort of thinking created that level of tragedy.” What do you think?
[Image via Japan Probe]
September 7th, 2009 at 9:42 am
If the manga accompanies the sections where Hitler spews his anti-Semitism with equally anti-Semitic art, there is no defending this work. If it resists any sensationalism, it might be worth having in the same way that having the actual work has historical significance.
September 7th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
The fact that this book is outselling many top-selling American comics only serves to show exactly how HUGE the comics/manga market is outside of America. That number would be a screaming success in the small pool that is American comics; in Japan it’s probably a single-digit percentage of the readership, likely less than 5 percent. It’s a fringe book, selling only to people already pre-disposed to its contents.
Personally, keeping books like this unavailable only increases their cachet, and makes it easy for those who agree with its contents to play the “this is the book THEY don’t want you to read” card.
Not to compare the two directly, but some years back, Denis Kitchen considered reprinting Seduction of the Innocent, touting the historical importance of the book.
In both (and other similar) cases, I think the best answer might be an annnotated version, containing the unedited original text, but analyzed and explained by scholars and/or historians. That would (I feel) better serve the argument of such books being historically significant, providing ample additonal material, listing the reprecussions the book had, evidence to the contrary of its statements, etc.
September 7th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
It will be difficult to create an objective translation of a book of this sort. On one hand, you want to treat the subject matter fairly. On the other hand, just the existance of a manga translation is sensationalistic.
It’s important that Mein Kampf be made available for historial purposes, but I’m not sure what the point of a manga translation would be.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:16 am
For those calling this sensationalistic, you have to keep in mind that over in Japan that reading manga is just about as natural as reading prose.
Over here we associate manga with Naruto and Dragon Ball Z, but over in Japan comics about cooking (the manga “Oishinbo”) are able to sell over 1 MILLION copies a volume. No superheroes, powers, or explosions needed.
So a manga version of Mein Kampf may be a weird choice for adaptation, it’s not inherently sensationalized just because it’s a manga. It depends on the content itself to see if it qualifies as “sensationalism.”
September 21st, 2009 at 12:17 am
can someone translate the manga?
April 15th, 2011 at 3:30 am
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